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Wealth and Waste in the Beautiful and Damned

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Wealth and Waste in the Beautiful and Damned English Language and Literature Studies; Vol. 2, No. 4; 2012 ISSN 1925-4768 E-ISSN 1925-4776 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education Economic Haunting: Wealth and Waste in The Beautiful and Damned Thi Huong Giang Bui1 1 Department of English Literature, Fukuoka Women’s University, Fukuoka, Japan Correspondence: Thi Huong Giang Bui, Department of English Literature, Fukuoka Women’s University, 1-1-1 Kasumigaoka, Higashiku, Fukuoka, Japan 813-8529. Tel: 81-80-4272-2455. E-mail: [email protected] Received: September 9, 2012 Accepted: September 24, 2012 Online Published: October 16, 2012 doi:10.5539/ells.v2n4p61 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ells.v2n4p61 Abstract Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned (1922) is one of the most successful novels revealing the anxiety over money and waste in the early twentieth century. However, Fitzgerald is not alone in his anxiety over wealth and waste. The period in which he wrote the novel shows the great ambivalence of American public with wealth for Americans believe that they could achieve great wealth and strive for emulating the rich. The great ambivalence has concerned with the gain and the dissipation of the rich and obviously, it has shown successfully in Fitzgerald’s novel. The present study aims to shed light on the life of Anthony Patch whose foundations of romantic ideals are rather based on his idealized world trapped in economic anxiety haunted all his life than his consciousness of the real life. Besides, the study attempts to explain the reasons why Anthony has faced with meaninglessness in life and his psychological loss in the trap of the old aristocracy in life which then makes him become a broken man. Keywords: The Beautiful and Damned, wealth, waste, economic, haunting, trauma 1. Introduction Pelzer (2000: 53) asserts that “If in This Side of Paradise, Amory Blaine’s quest for life’s meaning is a paean to possibility, then in The Beautiful and Damned Anthony and Gloria Patch’s descent into self-absorbed paralysis is a dirge to disillusionment and human waste”. The novel, therefore, exhibits the psychological changes of Anthony with the haunting of money during his life with a symbol of Anthony’s grandfather as “a phantom chase after his own dream’s shadow” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 47). As Fitzgerald refers in a letter to Charles Scribner, The Beautiful and Damned is about “the life of Anthony Patch between his 25th and 33rd years (1913-1921) [and] he is one of those many tastes and weaknesses of an artist but with no actual creative inspiration” (Bruccoli, 1994: 41). Moreover, Fitzgerald notifies that “How he [Anthony] and his beautiful wife are wrecked on the shoals of dissipation is told in the story. This sounds sordid but it’s really a most sensational book” (Bruccoli, 1994: 41). With the novel’s setting, New York City, in fact, up and down Fifth Avenue, Fitzgerald opens up the depth of economic anxiety of the rapidly changing in the American society in the early twentieth century What is surprise here, however, is Fitzgerald’s contradictory and dilemma regarding money between his ambivalence to wealth depicted in his novels and his lifestyle. Fitzgerald is really anxious about getting money by pushing himself writing novels and commercial short stories and he is usually under pressure of gaining more money to supply his needs. It is more especially true after Fitzgerald’s marriage in 1920 when the Fitzgeralds reflect themselves as a celebrity couple in New York City, and the Fitzgeralds seem to be a symbol for the American Dream. Jim Cullen’s “American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation” (2003) depicts a picture right after the title of the book which shows Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald on their honey moon, titled that, “The photo is a virtual compendium of American Dreams: house, car, beauty, youth, talent”. It is a life of fabulous wealth and drifting all their time from England, France, and Switzerland to Italy. Back to the America, they also spend time in the rented apartments or hotels between New York, Long Island, Montgomery, St Paul, Wilmington and Baltimore. When Zelda gets a mental illness and is hospitalized in Baltimore, Fitzgerald still lives in various hotels in North Carolina and Maryland before his final move to Hollywood. It can be said that the Fitzgeralds certainly have never settled down and get a permanent living and also face with many dilemmas in gaining wealth. Therefore, Fitzgerald’s novels in generally and The Beautiful and Damned in particular exhibits a deeper sense of the hero’s economic anxiety relationship with wealth as well as the narrative’s ambivalence to solve the matter. 61 www.ccsenet.org/ells English Language and Literature Studies Vol. 2, No. 4; 2012 According to Konings (2011: 1), “our faith in money involves an experience of it as both traumatic and redemptive” and so is Anthony’s life. Anthony begins with the joys of his life in “editions of Swinburne, Meredith, and Hardy, and a yellowed illegible autograph letter of Keats’s, finding later that he had been amazingly overcharged” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 9), and gradually, he learns that “he was looked upon as a rather romantic figure, a scholar, a recluse, a tower of erudition” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 9). Hence, Anthony never thinks going to Harvard is a good idea because “it was said of him that had he not come to college so young he might have “done extremely well”’ (Fitzgerald, 1922: 9). Anthony, a romantic figure, never strives to fit his world into the life of romantic books and poems because of his different desires and purposes of his life. The narrative, therefore, portrays Anthony as a smart figure but it does not seem that he could control his life and is always in a quest of a dream of gaining money from his grandfather. Consequently, within good conditions and background, Anthony, ironically, does not do anything great and meaningful in his life as his grandfather expects him to do. Anthony only hopes that great futures will await him basing on money that he could inherit from his grandfather. However, for Anthony, it seems “a tragedy to want nothing” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 47). Anthony supposes that one day he could “accomplish some quiet subtle thing that the elect would deem worthy and, passing on, would join the dimmer stars in a nebulous, indeterminate heaven half-way between death and immortality” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 5). Anthony, however, even does not clearly know which “some quiet subtle thing” is. Everything seems so dim in his eyes and we can say that Anthony falls into the illusive world which is established on his grandfather’s money and position. 2. Discussion The anxiety of money has dogged Anthony through the novel. Konings (2011: 6) argues that “money has emerged as a key stabilizer of social life, an anchor for what are often rapid processes of change”. Initially, the narrative focuses on the economic haunting which appears to Anthony’s life even when he is only a small boy. Anthony uses his status of old aristocracy to get his life superior to other people and “drew as much consciousness of social security from being the grandson of Adam J. Patch as he would have had from tracing his line over the sea to the crusaders” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 6). Anthony’s romantic view reflects how great things he wants to do and he could win in life. He also consciously knows what his family background is with much thought of seeing “himself a power upon the earth; with his grandfather’s money he might build his own pedestal and be a Talleyrand, a Lord Verulam” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 48). Moreover, Anthony gives himself the right of justifying others because the narrative depicts him as “a distinct and dynamic personality, opinionated, contemptuous, functioning from within outward—a man who was aware that there could be no honor and yet had honor, who knew the sophistry of courage and yet was brave” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 5). Ironically, in contrast, Anthony’s income “was slightly under seven thousand a year, the interest on money inherited from his mother” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 12). Anthony cannot get any money from his millionaire grandfather “who never allowed his own son to graduate from a very liberal allowance” because Adam Patch “judged that this sum was sufficient for young Anthony’s needs” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 12). His old wealth grandfather’s expectations are different from those of Anthony, and of course, Anthony’s grandfather does not want Anthony to depend too much on family’s money and become an independent and mature man. In reality, Anthony is never satisfied with that sum of money. But the quickest way to get much more money only comes to Anthony if his grandfather dies. As a result, he always wishes that his grandfather will die as sooner as better. We can say that Anthony is haunted by the luxurious life which can depend on only his grandfather’s death. Anthony did nothing in his early life to match his grandfather’s expectation that “you (Anthony) ought to do something” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 15). Hence, Anthony’s dream is “some golden day, of course, he would have many millions; meanwhile he possessed a raison d’être in the theoretical creation of essays on the popes of the Renaissance” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 13). To gain this means “he had hoped to find his grandfather dead” (Fitzgerald, 1922: 13). Therefore, Anthony just waits for that golden day and does not want to do anything seriously. While Dick Caramel, one of his close friends, tries to finish his first novel, the Demon Lover, Anthony thinks it “was glad he wasn’t going to work on his book” which is about Middle Ages or he call the Dark Ages.
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